“Adrian,” she says.
Atlas goes statue-still.Kael doesn’t write it down.He doesn’t need to.
“Your ex skating partner,” he says.It’s not a question, but Wren nods.
“Thank you,” Kael says, like she just handed him something sacred.“That’s enough for today.”
Wren lets out a breath that shakes all the way down.She doesn’t cry.She doesn’t have to.I can feel the tremor in the air.
“Hey,” I say, softer.“One more thing.The safety word—same as last night?”
She nods.
Kael’s eyebrow ticks.“You two have a safety word?”
“Two,” I say.“One for get me out, one for call the cavalry.”
Atlas’s mouth tugs like it wants to be a grin and can’t quite get there.“What are they?”
Wren swallows, and for the first time today there’s a ribbon of humor threaded through her voice.“Hydrate,” she says, “and Zamboni.”
Kael stares at us a second and then huffs an almost-laugh, like his nervous system finally found a place to set a glass down.“Fine.Hydrate means leave.Zamboni means I bulldoze the building.”
“Kael,” she murmurs.
“Metaphorically,” he adds, then looks at Atlas.“Mostly.”
Atlas’s eyes soften just enough that I remember why I like him more than is convenient.
A knock on the doorframe makes all of us twitch.It’s one of the defensemen on Wren’s rehab list, towel around his neck, contrite expression like he knows he’s interrupting a weather event.“Uh, you said ten minutes, Harper?”
“Give me five,” she says without looking away from us, and the kid nods and disappears so fast he leaves steam in his wake.
Kael checks the hallway.“We’ll keep the door,” he says.“You do your work.If you need out—”
“Hydrate,” Wren says.
“And if we need to end Boston as a concept,” I add, “Zamboni.”
Atlas finally, finally cracks a smile.“Copy.”
I turn back to Wren.“Do you want me to stay in here for rehab or outside the door?”
She studies my face like she’s measuring how much I mean it.“Inside,” she says.“If you want.”
If you want.My chest does something stupid and painful.
“I want,” I say.
She nods like we just settled the weather for the next hour, and the tension in the room shifts from survival to endurance—hard, but possible.
Kael squeezes the door to the halfway position again and claims the stretch of hallway like it belongs to him.Atlas plants his back to the opposite frame and crosses his arms, not a threat to the building so much as a promise to the person in it.
Wren presses her palm to mine for a second longer before she pulls away to set up the rehab bands.The tremor in her fingers hasn’t vanished, but it’s steadier now, the kind that comes after a quake when you’re counting aftershocks and realizing the house is still standing.
Better counts.
It’s not the ending I want for today.It’s not the ending she deserves.But it’s the one we have: four people in a too-bright room making space for a future where she doesn’t flinch every time her phone remembers her.
